Paul Morris (1)

The connecting thread for the four stories that comprise Series 6 of The Diary of River Song is, as the behind-the-scenes chat has it, “the fringes”: these stories all take place at the edges of classic Doctor Who stories featuring the first four Doctors.

The most obvious connection is in An Unearthly Woman, which sees River netting herself a place as a substitute teacher at Coal Hill School to keep an eye on Susan before the events of “An Unearthly Child”, the story that started it all. This was my favourite story in the volume: it started the whole thing off well; the dialogue with River, Ian, and Barbara was fun; and Claudia Grant does an excellent job as Susan. Also special cameo appearance by David Bradley! Love him to bits.

Next stop is The Web of Time, which Whovians will recognize as riffing on the Second Doctor story “The Web of Fear”. A It has a sort of Second World War Blitz kind of feel as the army is evacuating people from the city—although this time people are being discouraged from using the Underground, rather than encouraged. Captain Knight, who appears in The Web of Fear, plays a key role here. (His name sounded familiar to me and I had a different theory as to why.) The idea of the art heist was the slenderest of MacGuffins but it’s certainly in keeping with River’s occasional mercenary streak.

The rather naughty-sounding Peepshow takes its title from a working title for the Third Doctor story “Carnival of Monsters”. I am always here for Doctor Who enemies insulting each other, and the Sontarans and the Ogrons do a great job of it. Any story with Dan Starkey Sontaraning it up will put a smile on my face. I was less enthusiastic about the dynamic between River and Dibbsworth, the security guard who ends up being River’s companion for this adventure. Especially icky was his OTT reaction to what I presume was love-potion lipstick. It seemed to be overegged as a joke. I also managed to zone out at the end and completely miss Tim Treloar’s cameo as the Third Doctor.

Lastly, The Talents of Greel takes place just before the events of the Fourth Doctor story The Talons of Weng-Chiang (the title is a pun on the TV story’s working title “The Talons of Greel”) I couldn’t like this story very much, I’m afraid; Weng-Chiang is one of the cringiest stories in the entire Doctor Who canon because of its portrayals of Chinese people and the use of yellowface acting, so I was not disposed to like a story connected to it. They did get Nicholas Goh to voice Li H’Sen Chang and Mr Sin, but still. Another icky thing was Greel’s choice of young women as the source of life essence. Like come on dude, super gross. At one point Jago even said something about his new theatre patron’s “obsession with chorus girls”, and I said out loud “Okay Jago, want to roll that back again and hear how CREEPY that sounds?” Blech. It didn’t end the collection on a great note.… (altro)